Speech: “Imperialism, racism, and torture”

26May

This is the text of a speech I gave at a panel Stanford Says No to War hosted called “It’s All About U.S.: Questioning U.S. Militarism”. This speech was given on May 26th, 2010 and is the last speech I gave at Stanford.

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During the Nuremberg Trials, the chief American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, famously stated: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” America has a long history of war and its accumulated evils. It began as thirteen small colonies that sat along the Atlantic coast. In over a century, the United States expanded all the way to the Pacific Ocean – from sea to shining sea. The process was not pretty. It involved the genocide of the native Americans and the enslavement of millions of black Africans whose free labor was needed to fuel the American capitalist economy. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States began to colonize other lands, such as Hawaii, the Philippines and Cuba. Since then, it has occupied and militarily intervened in several parts of the globe, such as in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. And let’s not forget the many democratically-elected leaders America overthrew in places like Chile and Iran. The United States currently occupies two countries – Iraq and Afghanistan – and has a network of over 700 bases across the planet. Thus, the United States is an empire.

One key element of American imperial history is its use of torture, which traces back to America’s treatment of African slaves. Such as analysis of torture, especially in the post-9/11 era, is very uncommon to hear in mainstream political discourse. Therefore, before I proceed, it is important to dispel of the current myths about torture propagated in the mainstream media.

As we are well-aware, the United States has tortured hundreds of detainees suspected of being involved in terrorism. It’s hard not to notice when the former Vice President brags about personally authorizing the use of torture on national television. These acts included water-boarding, physical beatings, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and, in some cases, death. The primary justification is that torture is a necessary tool to extract information from people who might know about impending threats of terrorism. Politicians, both Republican and Democrat, intellectuals, pundits and other thought-leaders argue that America faces a new kind of threat. America is up against extremist, religious fanatics who hate America and wish to kill innocent Americans. Current domestic and international laws and law enforcement tactics are not sufficient to subdue this threat. As Alberto Gonzalez said to former President George W. Bush, the Geneva Conventions are “obsolete” in this new war against terrorism. Therefore, the United States must be willing to torture terrorist suspects in order to extract vital information that could prevent the next terrorist attack. This apocalyptic mindset has impacted the current American psyche and post-9/11 American foreign policy. Since the war is against a nebulous enemy, the war against terrorism is essentially a permanent war.

Despite the compelling arguments used to justify torture, an objective look at the facts rips them asunder. First, there is very little to no evidence to prove that torture is a useful interrogation technique. In fact, the evidence that does exist proves the opposite – that torture is ineffective because the suspect will say anything, whether it’s true or not, in order to make the torture stop. Ali Soufan, an intelligence official who interrogated Abu Zubaydah, stated that conventional interrogation techniques compelled Zubaydah to provide actionable intelligence. It was only after Zubaydah was waterboarded several times that he could not provide useful intelligence.

Second, most of the people detained, usually indefinitely, in places like Guantanamo Bay and CIA-owned black sites are not diehard terrorists. The vast majority of them are innocent. Even President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other high government officials knew this. Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Cheney “had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent…If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.” The apocalyptic mindset of the broader War on Terror justified this tragedy.

Given the falsity of official justifications for torture, one question remains. Why does the United States continue to torture people, even though it is ineffective, illegal and immoral? Tortured has historically been used by governments for four main reasons [note: see pg. 4 of this piece]. One reason is to extract a confession and establish guilt. Torture is commonly used in countries where the presumption of innocence does not exist in the legal system. The second reason is for power. Powerful rulers would torture people in order to instill fear in their citizenry and remind them of who’s boss. The third reason is to curb political dissent. While all three of these reasons may be applicable to the United States, the fourth reason gets to the heart of why America tortures. The fourth historical reason for utilizing torture is to subjugate a group of people considered to be sub-human.

An apt comparison to the American use of torture would be the French use of torture during the Algerian War of Independence [note: see this piece]. The French colonization of Algeria was based on a racist ideology of the French civilizing mission. In the eyes of the French colonial power, their culture was superior and more advanced than the cultures of racially-inferior “others”, in this case, the Algerians. The French saw it was their duty to “civilize” people they viewed as primitive through colonialism. Thus, the French annexed Algeria and established colonial settlements on Algerian land. When Algerian nationalists engaged in guerrilla warfare to oust the French, France felt it was up against a new kind of enemy – Maoist-inspired guerrillas. In order to defeat this enemy, the French believed it was necessary to engage in exceptional and unconventional means of warfare. This included denial of prisoner-of-war protections for captured combatants, trials in military tribunals, torture and execution. The French counter-insurgency strategy is very similar to American foreign policy post-9/11. It was motivated, in large part, by a belief in Algerian sub-humanity, in other words, racism.

Racism is not just an individual problem of prejudice or hate. It is an ideology used to justify systems of hegemony and oppression. It creates a binary between the Self and the Other. The Self is ascribed all positive aspects of humanity, such as rationality, intelligence, high culture, and credit for creating the benefits of modern civilization. The Other is ascribed all negative aspects of humanity, such as irrationality, primitivity, criminality, and barbarity. By categorizing certain groups as inferior “others”, hegemonic powers rob those people of their humanity, thus, making it easier to commit acts of brutality against them for imperial interests. Racism, under the banner of “manifest destiny”, was used to justify the genocide committed against the Native Americans that made room for American territorial expansion. Racism was used to justify the enslavement of millions of black Africans whose free labor was exploited to work on plantations and build the American economy. Despite the advancements made during the civil rights movement, racism still exists in many areas of American life, such as the disproportionate number of African-Americans and Latinos in prison, housing segregation, the education system, and police brutality committed against people of color. Some of the most recent cases of police brutality were the deaths of 22-year-old Oscar Grant in Oakland and 7-year-old Aiyana Jones in Detroit – both of whom were African-American.

America’s wars against Afghanistan and Iraq serve to maintain American global hegemony and access to key resources, such as oil. Thus, the racist dehumanization of Muslims, Arabs and South Asians is done to justify America’s wars and acts of torture committed primarily against people from countries whose populations are predominantly Muslim and black and brown-skinned, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. It is not difficult to see witness manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism in American society. It exists within the media and underlies the sophistry of politicians and leading intellectuals. Muslims, Arabs and South Asians are always suspected of being terrorists, similar to how black and Latino people are suspected of being drug-dealers, gang-bangers and criminals. Racism is the fundamental ideological motivation behind America’s wars and use of torture.

The key task now is to end America’s use of torture and, more broadly, eliminate racism and imperialism. A daunting task but a necessary one, nevertheless. First, it is important for everyone, of all races, to see and treat every other person as a human being. Despite our cultural differences, we are part of one human family. Second, it is crucial that we hold our political leaders accountable for authorizing acts of torture and starting wars. At Stanford, we can start by pressuring our government to hold current Professor and former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and other government officials, accountable for authorizing torture and engaging in aggressive wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Third, it is vital that we work to build institutions that foster peace instead of war and sustain humanity rather than destroy it. To build a better future for humanity is by no means an easy task. But a million-mile journey begins with one step. Let’s make that first step.

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UPDATE (5/29/2010): The video of the panel is uploaded on Stanford Says No to War’s YouTube channel. The entire video is split up into 17 parts so click here to see all of them. My speech starts in the middle of Part 3 and ends in the first half of Part 4. I recommend watching the entire video because all of the perspectives and the discussion were excellent.

UPDATE (12/15/2010): Last month, this article was submitted to the Stanford Progressive and made it other websites, such as urukent.info and Information Clearing House. You can see it here, here and here.

3 responses to “Speech: “Imperialism, racism, and torture””

Great work, Adam. You’re one of the only people who makes me feel the least bit hopeful about the future.

I read this thinking of the little known ‘School of the Africas,” in the guise of the African Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in D.C., the equivalent of the infamous School of the Americas. See Pambazuka News,http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62008.